If two or more rows tie for a rank in the same partition, each tied rows receives the same rank. For example, if the two top salespeople have the same SalesYTD value, they are both ranked one. The salesperson with the next highest SalesYTD is ranked number two. This is one more than the number of distinct rows that come before this row. Therefore, the numbers returned by the DENSE_RANK function do not have gaps and always have consecutive ranks.

The sort order used for the whole query determines the order in which the rows appear in a result. This implies that a row ranked number one does not have to be the first row in the partition.

A. Ranking rows within a partition

The following example ranks the products in inventory the specified inventory locations according to their quantities. The result set is partitioned by LocationID and logically ordered by Quantity. Notice that products 494 and 495 have the same quantity. Because they are tied, they are both ranked one.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
SELECT i.ProductID, p.Name, i.LocationID, i.Quantity
,DENSE_RANK() OVER
(PARTITION BY i.LocationID ORDER BY i.Quantity DESC) AS Rank
FROM Production.ProductInventory AS i
INNER JOIN Production.Product AS p
ON i.ProductID = p.ProductID
WHERE i.LocationID BETWEEN 3 AND 4
ORDER BY i.LocationID;
GO